Routledge Environmental Humanities

From microplastics in the sea to hyper-trends such as global climate change, mega-extinction, and widening social disparities and displacement, we live on a planet undergoing tremendous flux and uncertainty. At the center of this transformation is human culture, both contributing to the state of the world and responding to planetary change. The Routledge Environmental Humanities Series seeks to engage with contemporary environmental challenges through the various lenses of the humanities and to explore foundational issues in environmental justice, multicultural environmentalism, ecofeminism, environmental psychology, environmental materialities and textualities, Traditional Ecological Knowledge, environmental communication and information management, multispecies relationships, and related topics. The series is premised on the notion that the arts, humanities, and social sciences, integrated with the natural sciences, are essential to comprehensive environmental studies.

The environmental humanities are a multidimensional discipline encompassing such fields as anthropology, history, literary and media studies, philosophy, psychology, religion, sociology, and women’s and gender studies; however, the Routledge Environmental Humanities is particularly eager to receive book proposals that explicitly cross traditional disciplinary boundaries, bringing the full force of multiple perspectives to illuminate vexing and profound environmental topics. We favor manuscripts aimed at an international readership and written in a lively and accessible style. Our readers include scholars and students from across the span of environmental studies disciplines and thoughtful citizens and policy makers interested in the human dimensions of environmental change.

A Cultural History of Climate Change shows that the humanities are not simply a late-arriving appendage to Earth System science, to help in the work of translation. These essays offer distinctive insights into how and why humans reason and imagine their ‘weather-worlds’ (Ingold, 2010). We learn about the interpenetration of climate and culture and are prompted to think creatively about different ways in which the idea of climate change can be conceptualised and acted upon beyond merely ‘saving the planet’.

Professor Mike Hulme, King's College London, in Green Letters

Series Editors:

Professor Scott Slovic, University of Idaho, USA

Professor Joni Adamson, Arizona State University, USA

Professor YUKI Masami, Kanazawa University, Japan

Previous editors:

Professor Iain McCalman, University of Sydney Research Fellow in History; Director, Sydney University Environment Institute.

Professor Libby Robin, Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University, Canberra; Guest Professor of Environmental History, Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm Sweden.

Christina Alt, St Andrews University, UK, Alison Bashford, University of New South Wales, Australia, Peter Coates, University of Bristol, UK, Thom van Dooren, University of New South Wales, Australia, Georgina Endfield, Liverpool UK, Jodi Frawley, University of Western Australia, Andrea Gaynor, The University of Western Australia, Australia, Christina Gerhardt, University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, USA,□Tom Lynch, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, USA, Jennifer Newell, Australian Museum, Sydney, Australia , Simon Pooley, Imperial College London, UK, Sandra Swart, Stellenbosch University, South Africa, Ann Waltner, University of Minnesota, US, Jessica Weir, University of Western Sydney, Australia

Reviews

Praise for A Cultural History of Climate Change (2016):

A Cultural History of Climate Change shows that the humanities are not simply a late-arriving appendage to Earth System science, to help in the work of translation. These essays offer distinctive insights into how and why humans reason and imagine their ‘weather-worlds’ (Ingold, 2010). We learn about the interpenetration of climate and culture and are prompted to think creatively about different ways in which the idea of climate change can be conceptualised and acted upon beyond merely ‘saving the planet’.

Perspectives from the Humanities, Law and Social Sciences, 1st Edition

Anthropocene Antarctica offers new ways of thinking about the ‘Continent for Science and Peace’ in a time of planetary environmental change. In the Anthropocene, Antarctica has become central to the Earth’s future. Ice cores taken from its interior reveal the deep environmental history of the…

1st Edition

This book identifies a major turn in contemporary British literature in response to environmental crisis. It argues that the pastoral is emerging as a new critical framework in which to explore the understanding of people and place in this context.
The New Pastoral in Contemporary British Writing…

Landscapes, State and Environmental Movements, 1st Edition

This book is an exploration of the environmental makings and contested historical trajectories of environmental change in Turkey. Despite the recent proliferation of studies on the political economy of environmental change and urban transformation, until now there has not been a sufficiently…

Conflict, Conservation and Coexistence, 1st Edition

This book places lion conservation and the relationship between people and lions both in historical context and in the context of the contemporary politics of conservation in Africa. The killing of Cecil the Lion in July 2015 brought such issues to the public’s attention. Were lions threatened in…

Negotiating the Environment, 1st Edition

Indigenous, Modern and Postcolonial Relations to Nature contributes to the young field of intercultural philosophy by introducing the perspective of critical and postcolonial thinkers who have focused on systematic racism, power relations and the intersection of cultural identity and political…

1st Edition

This volume discusses gardens as designed landscapes of mediation between nature and culture, embodying different levels of human control over wilderness, defining specific rules for this confrontation and staging different forms of human dominance.
The contributing authors focus on ways of…

Urban margins in contemporary literature, 1st Edition

How do those pushed to the margins survive in contemporary cities? What role do they play in today’s increasingly complex urban ecosystems? Faced with stark disparities in human and environmental wellbeing, what form might more equitable cities take?
Waste Matters argues that contemporary…

Spatial Injustice and Environmental Humanities, 1st Edition

Ecological Exile explores how contemporary literature, film, and media culture confront ecological crises through perspectives of spatial justice – a facet of social justice that looks at unjust circumstances as a phenomenon of space. Growing instances of flooding, population displacement, and…

1st Edition

Through an examination of carbon footprint metaphors, this books demonstrates the ways in which climate change and other ecological issues are culturally and materially constituted through metaphor.
The carbon footprint metaphor has achieved a ubiquitous presence in Anglo-North American public…

In recent decades, science has experienced a revolutionary shift. The development and extensive application of computer modelling and simulation has transformed the knowledge‐making practices of scientific fields as diverse as astro‐physics, genetics, robotics and demography. This epistemic…

Theory and Practice, 1st Edition

Throughout the early modern period, scientific debate and governmental action became increasingly preoccupied with the environment, generating discussion across Europe and the wider world as to how to improve land and climate for human benefit. This discourse eventually promoted the reconsideration…

Beyond Dualism in Gender, Body, and Environment, 1st Edition

Women and Nature? Beyond Dualism in Gender, Body, and Environment provides a historical context for understanding the contested relationships between women and nature, and it articulates strategies for moving beyond the dualistic theories and practices that often frame those relationships.
In 1974,…

Imagining Alternatives in an Age of Crisis, 1st Edition

In the face of what seems like a concerted effort to destroy the only planet that can sustain us, critique is an important tool. It is in this vein that most scholars have approached environmental crisis. While there are numerous texts that chronicle contemporary issues in environmental ills, there…

Rethinking the History of Conservation, 1st Edition

This volume brings together case studies from around the globe (including China, Latin America, the Philippines, Namibia, India and Europe) to explore the history of nature conservation in the twentieth century. It seeks to highlight the state, a central actor in these efforts, which is often taken…

1st Edition

In the age of climate change, the possibility that dramatic environmental transformations might cause the dislocation of millions of people has become not only a matter for scientific speculation or science-fiction narratives, but the object of strategic planning and military analysis.…

Food Security and the Environment in India and Britain, 1st Edition

The term "food security" does not immediately signal research done in humanities disciplines. It refers to a complex, contested issue, whose currency and significance are hardly debatable given present concerns about environmental change, resource management, and sustainability.
The subject is…

1st Edition

Among global environments, the undersea is unique in the challenges it poses – and the opportunities it affords – for sensation, perception, inquiry, and fantasy. The Aesthetics of the Undersea draws case studies in such potencies from the subaqueous imaginings of Western culture, and from the…

1st Edition

Environmental Justice in Contemporary US Narratives examines post-1929 US artistic interrogations of environmental disruption. Tracing themes of pollution, marine life, and agricultural production in the work of a number of historically significant writers including John Steinbeck, Ruth Ozeki, and…

Art in Community and Environment, 1st Edition

Arts Programming for the Anthropocene argues for a role for the arts as an engaged, professional practice in contemporary culture, charting the evolution of arts over the previous half century from a primarily solitary practice involved with its own internal dialogue to one actively seeking a…

1st Edition

Is unity of knowledge possible? Is it desirable? Two rival visions clash. One seeks a single way of explaining everything known and knowable about ourselves and the universe. The other champions diverse modes of understanding served by disparate kinds of evidence. Contrary views pit science against…

Myth, Propaganda, Reality, 1st Edition

Since the early 2000s, authoritarianism has risen as an increasingly powerful global phenomenon. This shift has not only social and political implications, but also environmental implications: authoritarian leaders seek to recast the relationship between society and the government in every aspect…

Literary and Historical Imaginaries, 1st Edition

Global seawater levels are rising and the low-lying coasts of the North Sea basin are amongst the most vulnerable in Europe. In our current moment of environmental crisis, the North Sea coasts are literary arenas in which the challenges and concerns of the Anthropocene are being played out.
This…

Perspectives from the Humanities and Social Sciences, 1st Edition

If the political and social benchmarks of sustainability and sustainable development are to be met, ignoring the role of the humanities and social, cultural and ethical values is highly problematic. People’s worldviews, beliefs and principles have an immediate impact on how they act and should be…

Ecoculture, Literature and the Bible, 1st Edition

Many ways of thinking about and living with ‘the environment’ have their roots in the Bible and the Christian cultural tradition. Environmental Humanities and Theologies shows that some of these ways are problematic. It also provides alternative ways that value both materiality and spirituality.…

Humanities for the Environment, or HfE, is an ambitious project that from 2013-2015 was funded by a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The project networked universities and researchers internationally through a system of 'observatories'. This book collects the work of…

Conflicts between predatory development and environmental policies, 1st Edition

Brazil is considered one of the world’s most important environmental powers. With a continental territory containing almost 70 per cent of the Amazon rainforest, along with a rich biodiversity and huge amount of natural resources, its geopolitical role in environmental decisions is crucial to…

How Population Size Matters in Animal-Human Relations, 1st Edition

Whether their populations are perceived as too large, just right, too small or non-existent, animal numbers matter to the humans with whom they share environments. Animals in the right numbers are accepted and even welcomed, but when they are seen to deviate from the human-declared set point, they…

Correcting Culture's Error, 1st Edition

Despite the fame Ted Hughes’s poetry has achieved, there has been surprisingly little critical writing on his children’s literature.
This book identifies the importance of Hughes’s children’s writing from an ecocritical perspective and argues that the healing function that Hughes ascribes to nature…

Concepts and Applications, 1st Edition

Large parts of our world are filled with plants, and human life depends on, interacts with, affects and is affected by plant life in various ways. Yet plants have not received nearly as much attention from philosophers and ethicists as they deserve. In environmental philosophy, plants are often…

From Feared to Revered, 1st Edition

This book is the most thorough exploration to date of the many ways in which a wild creature has been absorbed, reimagined and represented across the ages in all of the major art forms. The authors consider not only how the identity of sharks in the natural environment became incorporated into a…

Emerging Ethical Perspectives, 1st Edition

Although the religious and ethical consideration of food and eating is not a new phenomenon, the debate about food and eating today is distinctly different from most of what has preceded it in the history of Western culture. Yet the field of environmental ethics, especially religious approaches to…

Intersectional and International Voices, 1st Edition

Bringing together ecofeminism and ecological literary criticism (ecocriticism), this book presents diverse ways of understanding and responding to the tangled relationships between the personal, social, and environmental dimensions of human experience and expression.
Literature and Ecofeminism…

1st Edition

Charting innovative directions in the environmental humanities, this book examines the cultural history of climate change under three broad headings: history, writing and politics. Climate change compels us to rethink many of our traditional means of historical understanding, and demands new ways…

Challenging Disciplinary Boundaries, 1st Edition

Contemporary ideas of nature were largely shaped by schools of thought from Western cultural history and philosophy until the present-day concerns with environmental change and biodiversity conservation. There are many different ways of conceptualising nature in epistemological terms, reflecting…

Ecological wisdom at the intersection of religion, ecology, and philosophy, 1st Edition

Like never before in history, humans are becoming increasingly interconnected with one another and with the other inhabitants and habitats of Earth. There are numerous signs of planetary interrelations, from social media and international trade to genetic engineering and global climate change. The…

1st Edition

The notion of Endangerment stands at the heart of a network of concepts, values and practices dealing with objects and beings considered threatened by extinction, and with the procedures aimed at preserving them. Usually animated by a sense of urgency and citizenship, identifying endangered…

Ecocriticism and the poetics of Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes, 1st Edition

The environmental challenges facing humanity in the twenty-first century are not only acute and grave, they are also unprecedented in kind, complexity and scope. Nonetheless, or therefore, the political response to problems such as climate change, biodiversity loss and widespread pollution…

More-than-human encounters, 1st Edition

Transdisciplinary Journeys in the Anthropocene offers a new perspective on international environmental scholarship, focusing on the emotional and affective connections between human and nonhuman lives to reveal fresh connections between global issues of climate change, species extinction and…

1st Edition

This book examines the challenges and possibilities of conducting cultural environmental history research today. Disciplinary commitments certainly influence the questions scholars ask and the ways they seek out answers, but some methodological challenges go beyond the boundaries of any one…

A manifesto for the future, 1st Edition

The global ecological crisis is the greatest challenge humanity has ever had to confront, and humanity is failing. The triumph of the neo-liberal agenda, together with a debauched ‘scientism’, has reduced nature and people to nothing but raw materials, instruments and consumers to be efficiently…

Ecology, biology and technology in contemporary British and Irish poetry, 1st Edition

This book asks what it means to write poetry in and about the Anthropocene, the name given to a geological epoch where humans have a global ecological impact. Combining critical approaches such as ecocriticism and posthumanism with close reading and archival research, it argues that the…

Museums, Communities and Climate Change, 1st Edition

Curating the Future: Museums, Communities and Climate Change explores the way museums tackle the broad global issue of climate change. It explores the power of real objects and collections to stir hearts and minds, to engage communities affected by change.
Museums work through exhibitions, events,…

Interdisciplinary perspectives, 1st Edition

What does it mean to live a good life in a time when the planet is overheating, the human population continues to steadily reach new peaks, oceans are turning more acidic, and fertile soils the world over are eroding at unprecedented rates? These and other simultaneous harms and threats demand…

Defining place in an unsettled world, 1st Edition

While our world is characterized by mobility, global interactions, and increasing knowledge, we are facing serious challenges regarding the knowledge of the places around us. We understand and navigate our surroundings by relying on advanced technologies. Yet, a truly knowledgeable relationship to…

Rethinking modernity in a new epoch, 1st Edition

The Anthropocene, in which humankind has become a geological force, is a major scientific proposal; but it also means that the conceptions of the natural and social worlds on which sociology, political science, history, law, economics and philosophy rest are called into question.
The Anthropocene…

Essential Writings of Peter Berg, 1st Edition

Bioregionalism asks us to reimagine ourselves and the places where we live in ecological terms and to harmonize human activities with the natural systems that sustain life. As one of the originators of the concept of bioregionalism, Peter Berg (1937-2011) is a founding figure of contemporary…

An Environmental History, 1st Edition

Food and the global agricultural system has become one of the defining public concerns of the twenty-first century. Ecological disorder and inequity is at the heart of our food system. This thoughtful and confronting book tells the story of how the development of modern agriculture promised…

1st Edition

Research from a humanist perspective has much to offer in interrogating the social and cultural ramifications of invasion ecologies. The impossibility of securing national boundaries against accidental transfer and the unpredictable climatic changes of our time have introduced new dimensions and…